astern. ‘Can you hit the men on the engine?’
Timoleon shook his head. ‘Only if Apollo draws my bow,’ he said, but without any further complaints, he took a shaft from his belt and drew it until the bronze head was on his fingers before he loosed.
Satyrus lost the flight in the rising sun, but Peleus shook his head. ‘Well short.’
The engine in the bow of the Phoenician fired, but the bolt went short, fired at the wrong moment as the bow swung with the waves. They were coming in with the shore at a rapid pace as both sides tried to weather the point as close as possible.
‘Put the starboard oars right in the surf, boy!’ Peleus said. ‘There’s more water there than you think. Shave it close!’ To the archer, he said, ‘Try again.’
This time, Timoleon waited for the height of the rise of the waves under the stern and he drew so far that the head almost dropped off his thumb before he loosed. Again, Satyrus couldn’t follow the flight of the arrow.
‘Better,’ Peleus said.
‘Shoot these,’ Melitta said. She ignored Peleus’s look of anger. ‘Sakje flight arrows. Cane shafts. Allow for the wind – they don’t weigh anything and they’ll blow around.’
Timoleon picked one up – a hand-breadth longer than his longest arrow, made of swamp cane with iron needle points. ‘Nasty,’ he said. He grinned at Melitta. ‘Thanks, despoina.’
Melitta smiled at him. ‘Poison,’ she said.
Timoleon’s hand froze in the process of reaching for the point. ‘Fucking Scythians,’ he said respectfully and drew the shaft across his thumb. He pulled the shaft to the head and loosed at the top of the roll.
Even Satyrus saw the eddy of disturbance in the bow of the pirate. ‘Good shot!’ he shouted.
Timoleon beamed. ‘Apollo held my hand,’ he said. ‘Never shot so far in all my life.’ He nodded to Melitta. ‘Thanks, despoina. Care to have a go?’
She shrugged. ‘I could never get an arrow that far,’ she admitted.
The lighter of the pirates now thrust ahead, but they didn’t fire their engine. As the promontory grew to fill the horizon, their own archers fired, and with the sea breeze behind them, their arrows carried easily. One oarsmen was pinked, the broad bronze head of the arrow slicing his back.
Timoleon returned fire, but he used up Melitta’s supply of cane arrows without scoring another hit, each arrow blown to the right or left as if made of feathers. Melitta watched with a look Satyrus knew well – a look that said that she could have done better.
‘Let me have a shot,’ she said, when Timoleon was down to her last cane arrow.
‘Be my guest,’ he said.
She got up on the very tip of the stern platform, balanced a moment, lifted her bow, drew and shot in one fluid motion.
Her arrow vanished into the nearer trireme’s rowers, a little high to get the crew of the Ares engine, but she was rewarded with a thin scream, and then a rising shriek.
She clapped her hands in delight. Timoleon slapped her on the back.
The Phoenician’s engine fired, the bolt ripping along the port oar banks with a noise like tearing linen. It hit several oar shafts, bounded about inside the loom of oars and then fell into the sea without breaking anything.
Satyrus’s hand on the steering oar was like iron. He didn’t feel fatigue, and he was not particularly aware of the missile exchange. He watched his wake and adjusted his course, cheating the bow towards the open sea and allowing the incoming waves to push his hull a little further towards the promontory.
Just so, he thought, and held his course. He was in another place in his mind – a place where being the helmsman drove out room for any other fear.
Melitta slipped down the stem, followed by Timoleon. Peleus watched her with pursed lips, but when she was gone amidships, he said, ‘She bought us a ship’s length there.’
They weathered Akrotirion promontory as close as they dared, the starboard oars in the surf, with the black hulls half a dozen stades behind. Every pair of eyes on the Lotus that were above deck level strained for the Bay of Kition in hopes of seeing a couple of Rhodian warships riding at anchor.
The pirates lost a stade because the big Phoenician wouldn’t come in as close to the beach. They made a dog-leg out to sea and Satyrus breathed a little easier, almost sure that he could beat them in a dead sprint.
And then all that careful helm work was by the board, because sure enough, there was a Rhodian three-er riding high, her crew still at breakfast on the beach. Rhodos was a free port, independent of the wars of Alexander’s successors, but she protected Ptolemy’s trade because that suited her own interests, and the three-er in the harbour deterred the pirates instantly. Even as the Rhodian crews raced aboard, the pirates were already running for the open sea, their Ares engines silent.
The rowers on board the Golden Lotus cheered.
The Rhodian skipper came aboard with his trierarch and his helmsman, and Peleus hugged him, a handsome man with skin like old leather and hair so blond as to be almost white. His trierarch was like a reverse image of his captain, pale skin and black hair, and the helmsman was as black as a Nubian – an exotic trio, from the most famous navy in the world.
‘Peleus, I knew the Lotus as soon as she rounded the point. And Juba here says she’s moving mighty fast, eh? And I watched your rowers,’ he pointed at the tired men on the benches, ‘and we all yelled alarm together!’
‘And we were still too late, by Poseidon!’ the pale man said. He was the youngest of the three, and his face was burned red and he wore a purple chiton like a king’s.
‘This is my navarch. He’s Satyrus.’ Peleus motioned, and Satyrus stepped forward on the deck and smiled. ‘Leon’s nephew.’
‘Any ward of Leon is a friend of Rhodos,’ the Nubian said. He offered his hand, and Satyrus clasped it. ‘I’m Juba. The boy who can’t stand the touch of Helios is Orestes, and our fearless leader is Actis. Aren’t you a little young for a navarch?’
Peleus pursed his lips. ‘He was at the helm as we came around the point,’ he said.
Juba gave Satyrus a long look. ‘Not bad, old man. Is he serious, or another aristocrat?’
Peleus shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.
They shared dinner with the Rhodians, and breakfast, and then they were away, rowing hard along the south coast of Cyprus until the wind was fair for Rhodos. They touched at Xanthos, and all the news was bad – Antigonus One-Eye had his fleet at Miletus, and Rhodos was all but closed. The Rhodian navy was bold, but it was small.
Peleus sat across from Satyrus at a benched table in a wine shop on the waterfront in Xanthos, so close to the Lotus that her standing rigging cast a net of shadows in the setting sun. A slave rose on her toes to light the oil lamps along the back of the wine shop. Peleus watched her without interest.
‘The wind is fair for Rhodos,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t change, I’d say we crew her at the first blush of dawn and have a go. Lotus will be faster than anything they have at sea.’ As he spoke, he touched the wood of the table and then made a sign to avert ill luck.
Melitta came down the board from the ship wearing a decent woman’s chiton. The wine shop slave shook her head. ‘No women!’ she said.
Melitta raised an eyebrow and went and sat with her brother.
The slave followed her over. ‘Please, mistress! No women. It is the law of the town. Only slave women in the brothels and wine shops. The watch will arrest us both.’
Melitta sighed. She and Satyrus exchanged a look, and Melitta rose and walked back up the plank to the stern of the Lotus and vanished into the hull. She reappeared as a somewhat androgynous archer in a Pylos cap, and the slave submitted for a few bronze obols.
‘I hate Asia,’ Melitta said.
Peleus raised an eyebrow. ‘Athens would be worse, despoina,’ he said.
‘What’s the verdict?’ Melitta asked.
‘Peleus thinks we should try for Rhodos,’ Satyrus said.
Melitta drank some of his wine. ‘I knew you weren’t a coward,’ she said. The comment was tossed off, not meant to wound, but Satyrus felt his temper flare. He turned away.
Peleus sighed. ‘Ladybird, fleeing pirates is not cowardice, and frankly your whoring after a little glory is going to get people killed. You act like a boy – a particularly stupid boy. This is the sea. We have different rules here. We follow Poseidon, not Athena and not Ares. The sea can kill you any time it wants. You think a battle is a wonderful
